


Repaying a Favor

by JacarandaBanyan



Category: Naruto
Genre: And also bad at gifts, Blood and Injury, Canonical Character Death, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Kisame uses shark facts to make threats, Sasori Mini Bang 2020, Sasori and Deidara live AU, Sasori is bad at grief, as he does
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-09
Updated: 2020-11-09
Packaged: 2021-03-09 01:46:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,061
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27462922
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JacarandaBanyan/pseuds/JacarandaBanyan
Summary: Sasori finds himself indebted to Kisame after Kisame saves Deidara from a brush with death. When a chance presents itself to repay Kisame, he takes it.
Relationships: Deidara/Sasori (Naruto), Hoshigaki Kisame & Sasori
Comments: 7
Kudos: 47
Collections: Sasori Mini Bang





	Repaying a Favor

**Author's Note:**

> For Sasori Mini-Bang 2020, prompt: Sasori Lives AU/Precious Gifts. (I ended up using both in this fic)

When Sasori saw Deidara fall, he thought for a second that he’d lost control of his core and allowed his carefully contained heart to stop beating. 

He returned from his grandmother’s deathbed just in time to watch the girl with her hair styled in tight buns uncommon to the Land of Fire let loose a flurry of kunai at his partner. To the surprise of everyone on the battlefield, one of them slipped through his defences and embedded itself like a fresh grave stele right between his collarbones with a slick squelching sound like a hunter’s arrow striking a bird. 

Deidara’s eyes widened, then rapidly turned blank and unseeing as his body went into shock. He coughed, and great globs of blood erupted from his mouth and ran down the front of his cloak. Some of it dripped all the way down to the surface of his clay bird, which had shot up out of range just a fraction of second too late to avoid the chuunin girl’s attack, forming a slick puddle. 

He trembled in place, then slipped on his own blood and tumbled over the side. 

His attacker was a no-name Konoha chuunin, still clinging to her sensei like a puppy that hadn’t been weaned properly, but that didn’t matter in the harsh reality of sharp knives and vulnerable human flesh. Unfortunate timing and lucky hits were all too often enough to take down even the greatest shinobi. No fight’s outcome was ever totally certain. 

Sasori knew this, and yet he watched bright blonde hair streaked with dark blood flutter like soiled streamers around his partner’s blank face as he fell head-first towards the earth and felt as though he had joined the heaps of broken puppets lying back where he’d defeated his grandmother and the Slug Sage’s new apprentice.

He knew Deidara didn’t love him enough to let Sasori keep him forever, but he’d been so sure he would have more time than  _ this. _

If he’d had even one more puppet left, he could try to catch Deidara and pull him to safety. Had Deidara been a little less  _ stupid, _ there would be a puff of smoke revealing the body to be a mere clone. Had he had enough chakra left from his own battle, he might have disregarded his promise to never use his chakra strings on his lover and tried to stretch his chakra strings across the near mile that separated them to catch Deidara himself. 

(Surely Deidara would forgive him just this once? After all, this wasn’t how Deidara planned to go out. It was too quiet, and there was no explosion or light. Just a limp body falling like a rock to shatter on the ground.)

He shunshined quickly towards Deidara, but even that simple technique tugged more from his chakra reserves than he could really afford to give. 

And still he wasn’t going to make it in time.

“Look out! His partner’s incoming!” Called out a boy with long, dark hair and Hyuuga eyes.

“Hey! What happened to Sakura, bastard?” Screamed the Kyuubi as he spun to face Sasori. 

Sasori ignored them both. If he could get close enough, his chakra strings could reach Deidara-

No. He wasn’t going to make it.

It felt like an eternity had passed as he realized this and yet Deidara was still tumbling toward the ground.

And then the ground was abruptly replaced by a wave of fast-rushing water. 

The Konoha nin leaped out of the way of the flash flood. 

“He’s back?  _ Really?” _ Complained the girl who had gotten the lucky hit in as her team scattered. 

It took Sasori a second to process her words. There was little she could say that was more important than the line of Deidara’s body as he fell. Then a wave rose to catch Deidara, and he disappeared into the water with an enormous splash. 

“Itachi-san and I were in the area,” Kisame said from somewhere behind Sasori and to the left. “Did you succeed in extracting the Ichibi?”

“Of course,” Sasori replied snappishly. “Weren’t you two supposed to keep those Konoha nin away while we worked?” He didn’t turn around to look at Kisame. That would have meant tearing his eyes away from the disturbed patch of water where Deidara had disappeared. 

Kisame chuckled. 

“That Might Gai fellow puts up a good fight,” he said appreciatively. “I haven’t had so much fun in a long time. How’re your chakra levels?”

“Worse than they would have been if you two had managed to actually kill some of them.”

Kisame just laughed in response. 

“Don’t be like that. I heard you had a good fight yourself. Are either of them still alive?”

“The girl, possibly. If she figured out in time that she needed to cycle her chakra through her heart manually to help filter the base toxins, she should make it. Chiyo, however, is certainly dead.”

Something roughly Deidara-sized bobbed up out of the water like a cork. A rusty cloud of discolored water surrounded it. As Sasori watched, a shark made of clear blue water swirled into being beneath the blob of billowing black cloth and wet hair. It swam towards the two of them, catching the floating body against its fin. 

The blob groaned and curled around the fin. 

“Did you know sharks have electrosensory organs that let them hear your heartbeat? Even if you hide in the sand and stay perfectly still, the electrical impulses of your that muscle pumping will betray you.” A large, muscle-bound hand reached out and snagged Deidara by the back of his cloak and deposited him in Sasori’s arms. “Your heart’s racing, Sasori-san. Calm yourself- it makes you sound like prey, and my sharks hate being told not to hunt. Especially after they’ve scented blood.”

In his arms, Deidara blinked his eyes open and absently shook his wet hair out of his face. 

In a flash, Sasori fell upon the wound at the base of his throat. Even tiny chakra strings tugged more than they should on his dwindling reserves, but he ignored the sensation and focused on stitching Deidara’s throat back into working order and stopping the blood from pumping out into the water.

Finally, when the blood flow out of the wound had been reduced to a trickle and Deidara was breathing somewhat steadily again, Sasori swiveled his head around on his neck rotator and faced Kisame. 

“Why?” He demanded. 

“I like Deidara,” Kisame shrugged. “He complains a bit, but he’s always fun during our meetings. Besides, loosing a partner is hard. If it were me, I wouldn’t want to see some no-name take out Itachi-san when I was too low on chakra to intervene.”

He spoke Itachi’s name with clear fondness. He and Itachi were known to get along the best of all the Akatsuki pairs, without so much as a single complaint to Leader-sama between them. Perhaps their relationship, like his and Deidara’s, had taken an intimate turn at some point. Perhaps they were simply well-matched shinobi who had developed an easy camaraderie. 

It didn’t particularly matter to Sasori, so he didn’t ask. Instead, he fixed Deidara’s savior with a stern glare.

“What do you want?”

“Hmm?”

“We are criminals, Hoshigaki. We don’t do things out of the goodness of our hearts. So what is it that you’re angling for?”

Kisame shrugged. “I wasn’t lying. I do enjoy Deidara-san’s presence at meetings. But if you’re offering, I do have some passing interest in antidotes. Do you have anything that cycles toxins out of the lungs?”

Sasori shook his head. 

“Antidotes aren’t like medicine. They target specific toxins, occasionally in quite specific ways. Have you been poisoned?”

He doubted it; Kisame looked as hearty as ever.

“No. Not poisoned.”

“Too bad. Then I recommend you see a real doctor.”

All he got for his entirely reasonable suggestion was a snort.

He waited, but Kisame just sunk back under the water without asking for anything else.

Deidara stirred in his arms. 

“Sasori no Danna, what- turn around and look at me, it’s creepy when you’ve got your head turned 180 degrees, yeah!”

Sasori obligingly rotated his head back to the forward-facing position. 

“Get up, brat. I’m sure those Konoha nin didn’t scatter far. If we’re lucky, they’ve gone back to collect Grandmother and the Kazekage’s bodies.”

Deidara coughed, and one of Sasori’s chakra strings snapped. The trickle of blood from the wound got a little thicker. 

Had Hiruko not currently been compromised, he would have thrown Deidara inside and left him there to suffer. 

“Don’t move, you’ll mess my work up. I don’t want to hear a single word until that’s been stitched with real stitches. We’ve achieved our objectives. Let’s go.”

* * *

“Deidara.”

“Yes, Sasori no Danna?”

“If today ever happens again, and you die with your body more or less intact, I will gather your body before Zetsu so much as peaks his head out of the ground and make it into a beautiful puppet. Do you understand? I’ll even fireproof you, don’t think I won’t. Not even an exploding tag detonating on your hollowed-out chest will so much as singe you.”

Deidara rolled his eyes and sighed. Doing so caused him to wince; it likely hurt his throat. 

“No way, Danna. I’m going out in a blaze of glorious art, yeah. Zetsu won’t even bother to show up because there won’t be any scraps of me left big enough to eat.”

* * *

When Sasori heard from one of his spies that the Uchiha brothers had entered a death match, he almost didn’t bother to come see the outcome. It was unthinkable that a genius like Itachi would fall to an out-of-control, deranged teenager. Sasuke might be good, but he wasn’t Itachi Uchiha good. 

But Deidara’s near miss was still too immediate in his mind for him to discount the report entirely. Besides, this might not be a pure test of skill. After all, Itachi  _ had _ left Sasuke alive that night years ago, when he’d killed even the babies in their cradles. Perhaps...

In the end, it wasn’t that far from where he was anyway, and Deidara wouldn’t be back from his supply run for another day, so he went to watch. 

Kisame intercepted him before he could get close enough to see properly. 

“This is personal,” he said, and Sasori could feel his chakra network twisting and writhing with suppressed emotions. “Itachi insisted they do this one-on-one. He’ll be very upset if this fight isn’t concluded properly.”

Sasori’s certainty that Itachi would walk away from this an only child slipped another notch. 

“I don’t care what he wants,” he replied. “I’m not indebted to  _ him.” _

Kisame smiled like a dog at its owner when it realized it was going to die.

“He would never forgive me.”

Sasori shrugged. 

“Never is a strong word. And he didn’t strike me as the type to hold grudges.”

Kisame just shook his head. 

“He would  _ never _ forgive me. Saving him from this would just mean killing him in a different way.”

Sasori let it drop. He didn’t know or care enough about Itachi to argue with his long-time partner about any of this. 

In the distance, the rocks glowed violet, and strange shadows danced like flames against the rock whenever lightning illuminated them. 

* * *

Some time later, Kisame suddenly went stiff and closed his eyes. 

“It is done,” he pronounced, and then he turned and shunshined away. Just before he disappeared, Sasori thought he saw a bead of water trembling at the corner of his strange white eyes. 

Sasori stood like a statue for several seconds, then turned and headed towards the battlefield. 

Zetsu was already on the scene, but Sasori was faster than him. He reached out with chakra strings and snatched Itachi’s broken body from where it lay beside his brother’s on the cold, cracked stone floor. 

“Hey, Sasori-” Zetsu started, but Sasori didn’t stop to listen. 

He still had a debt to repay, after all. 

* * *

Turning Itachi into a puppet took nearly a week. Such a delicate body required delicate work, after all. 

“That fucker finally bit the dust?” Deidara exclaimed when he returned with fresh bags of clay. “Did he really die before I could beat him?”

Sasori hummed as he ran hair-fine chakra strings through the fine muscles of Itachi’s graceful fingers. 

“So who got the bastard in the end, then? Did Kisame finally snap and take the Kakuzu route to getting a new partner?”

“No,” Sasori said. “His little brother, Sasuke Uchiha, took him down. Kisame ensured no one interfered with their fight, then left to grieve alone.”

With gentle fingers, Sasori scraped the dried blood out from underneath Itachi’s fingernails, then carefully stripped his nails off altogether and replaced them with a more durable, pre-painted replacement that would be less likely to chip if the hands got jostled. 

Silence fell over the cave for several hours. Maybe Deidara fell asleep, or maybe he just got too absorbed in his own art project to care about Itachi anymore. 

Sasori worked patiently, preserving what he could and carefully removing what he couldn’t. 

He put special care into preserving the face. Sasori himself had never seen Itachi make any expression besides perhaps vaguely-threatening disinterest, Kisame likely had the opportunity to see a fuller emotional range. When Sasori had collected his collapsed body from the wreckage of the battlefield, the small smile on his face had not yet been frozen in place by rigor mortis. Sasori took special care with the muscles of Itachi’s face and the curve of that smile. Most of the organic tissue itself had to go, but delicately carved replacements ensured that everything remained exactly as it had looked at the moment of death. 

While it was  _ (a pain, a fear, a never-ending background source of background anxiety, a sense of horrified anticipation of an unavoidable end-) _ a pity that Deidara intended to die and leave Sasori behind forever without a puppet to keep him company, Itachi likely didn’t have similar convictions. He certainly had never extracted any sort of promise from Sasori. 

At last, his debt to Kisame would be paid. Just because Sasori was doomed to live without his partner didn’t mean Kisame had to do the same. 

* * *

When the puppet was finally complete, Sasori carefully loaded it into Hiruko and set out for the Akatsuki safehouse where his spies had most recently spotted Kisame. 

The house was absolutely still, standing like an abandoned fisherman’s shack haunted by ghosts of the drowned on the cliff overlooking the ocean. The islands of Water Country rose out of the water in the distance, and the sound of shrieking gulls and crashing waves covered up every other sound. The smell of tea drifted weakly out from the open window. 

He knocked on the door. He waited a minute, then knocked again. Somewhere behind him, a crow cawed and flapped noisily from one tree branch to another. He knocked again. 

When five minutes had passed, he got tired of waiting and pushed his own way through the door. 

Kisame sat on a rough bench, gazing out the open window at the white caps that decorated the roiling waves. In his lap was a full cup of tea that had gone completely cold. 

Sasori seated himself next to the other shinobi. 

“It hurts, doesn’t it,” he said. Kisame didn’t so much as glance at him. “It’s enough to make you regret ever getting attached in the first place.”

“I could never regret knowing Itachi-san,” Kisame said flatly. His voice sounded as though all its normal mirth and good humor had been wrung from it like water from a dish towel. 

“Even though he made you party to his own death?” Sasori stopped short of calling it a suicide. Lucky hits, after all. It was always possible. 

“What do you want, Sasori?” Kisame demanded tiredly. 

“To repay my debt.”

He rose and carefully unloaded Itachi from Hiruko and placed him on the bench where he’d been sitting moments ago, arranged so that the head rested against Kisame’s thigh. Slowly, he unwrapped the layers of cloth he’d used to cushion it for the journey here. 

“I know you’re not a puppeteer, so this one is more aesthetic than useful. I made sure to preserve everything, though. It will last as long as you like, even if you get it wet or let sea water get in the joints.”

Kisame went at still as a gravestone. 

Then, slowly, he looked down at Sasori’s gift. 

“What the fuck, Sasori.  _ What the fuck.”  _

Sasori glanced at Uchiha Itachi’s lovely face to make sure nothing had gotten messed up while he wasn’t looking. Pale, snowy skin shone up at him in the afternoon sun, more even now that a fresh coat of paint covered the fine grains of the wood Sasori had used to replace the cheek muscles he couldn’t preserve. Bright red rubies shone out of his expertly cleaned eye sockets, with careful onyx detailing on the gems’ surface to create the iconic Sharingan pattern. 

Kisame stared at Itachi’s masterfully preserved smile like he wanted to destroy it with Samehada and caress it at the same time. A single tear slid down his face, skirting the edge of his nose, and fell onto one unblinking, unseeing eye. 

“Why would you do this, Sasori? What am I supposed to  _ do _ with this? What- what the fuck.”

Sasori put an awkward hand on his shoulder. He’d hoped for and easier get-away than this. He didn’t actively dislike either Itachi or Kisame, but he didn’t really care enough about either of them to deal with Kisame’s grief.

Kisame stared at the hand on his shoulder in disbelief.

“I preserved as much of the original tissue as possible,” he said, in case Kisame cared. “Should you ever take up puppetry, the hands are fully articulated.”

Kisame looked like he was considering hurling himself off the cliff. That was probably Sasori’s cue to leave. A jounin’s grief could be a messy thing indeed, and had Sasori been in Kisame’s place, he wouldn’t want anyone to hover over his shoulder, watching him patch up the cracks in his composure.

Sasori nodded gave him one last pat on the shoulder, then climbed back into Hiruko and took his leave. 

Itachi would probably be a better companion than him right now anyway. 


End file.
